


Record

by Tieleen



Category: Famous Blue Raincoat (Song)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-03-22
Packaged: 2017-12-06 02:57:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tieleen/pseuds/Tieleen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just people following their truth in their fumbling way, hurting each other in their inexpert motion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Record

If you'd asked him at the time, he wouldn't have been able to tell you if it was better or worse that it happened that way – that he'd wound up unable to really be angry, or at least angry and unable to justify it to himself, not in those few moments when he was being fully honest.

Years later, he would see that it was better; it was so much better, more than he'd have been able to see at the time even as an impartial observer, that there wasn't any ugliness. Just people following their truth in their fumbling way, hurting each other in their inexpert motion. But back then he'd only cared about the hurt. He hadn't known how rare it all was, how fortunate he'd been, for all that it felt like anything but.

Years later, with the music still trailing up the street and through his window even in the middle of the night, he blows smoke at the ceiling and closes his eyes on an image of Mark's new place.

It's probably very different, now, than what they'd talked about back then - sitting around the table with a bottle of wine, Jane's feet in his lap and their eyes rapt on Mark's face while he talked. But he imagines it just the same, small and simple, its careful garden and careless décor. He imagines that raincoat hanging on a hook by the door, and it almost passes him by that he's imagining Jane's neat jacket hanging by it, that dark grey soft one she'd had back then.

It only occurs to him now that this was the way he imagined it then, too, while Mark's voice was drawing the picture for them, Jane's legs curved from her chair to reach his lap and her chin laid in her hand to listen. He hadn't been angry then, either.

Years later, he tries to place his own coat on a hastily added hook, choosing its position almost at random. It doesn't fit.

Mark's blue raincoat had been a thing back then, an inside joke between the three of them, ever since that girl in that bar – he doesn't remember anymore, really, neither girl nor bar, not even what brought the joke about. Just Jane's smile, small and lopsided, their eyes meeting for a moment; Mark's arm thrown around his shoulders, that laughter warm and quiet in his ear.

The coat has probably been thrown out years before. Though it would be like Mark to keep it, to mend that tear and any others that came later, to wash away stains or wear them as they were. 

He turns on his side and stubs the cigarette out, eyes open again to see the light from the street slanting onto the opposite wall. It's almost quiet down there now, most everyone gone home for the night.

It was good to see Jane again. It'd been too long. It's too bad; back then it had hurt too much to try and keep anything of her, and something in him had believed that would be true forever, or hadn't had breath enough to care. She'd left him in her way and he'd left her in his, and they'd both been left behind for something bigger and clearer they could only ever glimpse when Mark was describing some corner of it – something more important than all the rest of it, than both of them together.

He'd wanted to be angry about it, then. About the dreamer who'd come in and made them see something that wasn't there, something they'd only ever be able to tell each other about in toddlers' broken language, word here and word there. Who'd broken them away from each other and swept them aside, moving on instead of helping clear up the mess.

It would be like Mark to throw away that coat, too. Like he'd discarded his hair, the city, maybe any trace they'd either of them left on him in any way. That had been worth being angry about, back then.

But there are other things, there had been other things all along; Jane's shoulders lighter somehow in a way he could recognize but not understand, that arm around his shoulders, the man standing in the street with his gaunt face and his torn coat. And now, all these years later: Jane's smile at his door, her eyes still clearer than he expects them to be, her smile still easier, still less fragile in a way he hadn't thought to imagine, back then.

There's a lock of hair in his top drawer, such a strange, ill-fittingly romantic memento. It's the blandest brown, curling a bit and tied with an office rubber band. It might have gone a little lighter over the years, wherever it's been kept until now.

He sits up, reaches over to pull the notebook up off the nightstand. Jane will be pleased he remembered to say hello for her.


End file.
